lang

The lang function determines whether the context node matches the given language and returns boolean true or false.

Syntax

lang(string )

Parameters

• string
  • : The language code or localization (language and country) code to be matched.

Return value

true if the context node matches the given languages. Otherwise, false.

Description

• A node's language is determined by its xml:lang attribute. If the current node does not have an xml:lang attribute, then the value of the xml:lang attribute of the nearest ancestor that has an xml:lang attribute will determine the current node's language. If the language cannot be determined (no ancestor has an xml:lang attribute), this function will return false.

• If the given string does not specify a country code, this function will match nodes of that language with any country code. The converse is not true.

Given this fragment of XML:

<p xml:lang="en">I went up a floor.</p>
<p xml:lang="en-GB">I took the lift.</p>
<p xml:lang="en-US">I rode the elevator.</p>

And this part of an XSL template:

<xsl:value-of select="count(//p[lang('en')])" />
<xsl:value-of select="count(//p[lang('en-GB')])" />
<xsl:value-of select="count(//p[lang('en-US')])" />
<xsl:value-of select="count(//p[lang('de')])" />

The output might be:

3
1
1
0

Specifications

XPath 1.0 4.3

Gecko support

Supported.